Up the Mighty Clarence

 On Boxing Day, we headed 15 nautical miles up the Clarence River on a Huck Finn style adventure. The Clarence is navigable for about 100km inland to Grafton, but this involves getting under the Harwood Bridge which, with only 8.5m clearance, is too low for our 19m high mast to pass under.

Have we got enough clearance, Clarence?

 

Christmas was spent anchored at the pretty seaside town of Yamba. Santa managed to track us down on the boat, even though no one had quite got around to sending him a letter. Santa - you are just so awesome.


Walking home Christmas Eve, after a spot of Christmas shopping and a trip to the Yamba skate park.

We even managed to source some Yamba prawns for Christmas lunch but only just in the nick of time.

Even a town with a fleet of 20 trawlers can't keep up with Christmas demand.

Next day we headed up the Clarence on the rising tide and then anchored off the sugar mill for a few hours at Harwood to await the opening of the bridge. The crew were disgusted with the stink of the sugar mill - surprising from boys who went without showers for a whole six weeks earlier in the year. This bridge carries all the traffic between Sydney and Brisbane, so at this busy time of year the bridge operator opens it only at off peak times. We were impressed that he actually offered to open it at all on Boxing Day. Some friends were actually driving south to Canberra across it while we were waiting - hellooo D, J and A!

The Pacific Highway cleft in twain.

Up she goes.

That's our mast in the foreground.

 

Then with a little bit of daylight left there was just enough time to round the last bend to tie up at the public jetty right in the heart of the northern NSW town of Maclean - the "Scottish" village.

Maclean - Scottish town

Maclean telegraph poles - Clan Cameron is right outside the C.W.A.

 

Clan Macpherson

Maclean murals

 

Unfortunately at this point the weather turned a bit Scottish as well and what started as a drizzle turned into two days of pouring rain. We had planned to head further up river to Ulmarra, but ended up taking shelter in the cosy pubs and cafes of Maclean instead. The crew are starting to get pretty good at 500.

 

Unruly crew members BEHAVE . . .

. . . lest ye end up in Juvie.

It feels very different to be navigating past lush green fields and cows, instead of around coral reefs and tropical islands.

Tropical Queensland seems a long way off, waking up to the sight of cows in misty green paddocks.

The river was well marked with leads up to the Harwood bridge, but we were told these aren't reliable upstream of Maclean. The general advice seems to be to navigate on the rising tide, and err towards the deeper water on the outside of the bends or in the middle. There was plenty of depth for our 2m draft.

 

Riverboat Tom

On the way back down the river we anchored off Iluka. An exploratory trip into Iluka Harbour resulted in us running aground just to starboard of the easternmost entrance. The harbour was pretty crowded and very shallow in places - with local knowledge it would be fine. So we headed outside and anchored in the channel, just inside the little sand spit which had a lovely natural spa pool for swimming in, off the end the breakwater. Another  big downpour in the afternoon meant we could scrub the muddy pawprints off the deck and get a bit of laundry done.

Sea eagle's nest looking over Iluka boat harbour.